London South East Colleges

Overview

Over the last three years Bromley College has undergone a number of transformations to secure the quality of FE provision in the local area, which has in turn seen it go on to complete mergers with Orpington, Greenwich Community and Bexley colleges to form London South East Colleges.

The move has led to the creation of a college that today caters for more than 20,000 pupils studying for a wide range of vocational courses that lead to BTEC, NVQ, City & Guilds and other specialist qualifications, as well as higher education courses validated by the University of Greenwich and Canterbury Christ Church University.

How We Helped

One of the most important considerations for the senior leadership team throughout the various mergers was maintaining effective quality assurance – indeed, it’s one of the biggest issues colleges are having to deal with as the FE landscape undergoes a radical shift in the face of the area reviews and other institutional changes.

Through its investment in Mesma sofware, the college, which employs hundreds of teaching and support staff, has been able to maintain effective self-assessment practices as operational changes and business transformation processes have bitten hard, delivering the requisite standards of improvement planning, and aiding the quality assurance drive across four strategic campuses.

As a result, the college is also better prepared for inspections by Ofsted while the senior management team benefit from real-time access to critical information around its development plan at the touch of a button. Mesma is a management tool that provides access to self-assessment activity and improvement plans, bringing transparency and efficiencies to an otherwise time-intensive process.

Errol Ince, Assistant Principal for teaching, learning and assessment at London South East Colleges, explains how Mesma has played an important role in managing quality throughout the merger programme:

“At Bromley College we had been using Mesma for a few years prior to the mergers. There, the technology had been helping staff to track self-assessment paths, assessing the progress of agreed actions and producing grade and data analysis reports among other uses.

“This undoubtedly aided the provision of a curriculum management quality. So, it was clearly important to maintain quality assurance levels as the mergers, latterly with Bexley and Greenwich Community College, started to take place. Mesma has definitely helped here.”

Mesma is proving itself to be a valuable management aid which gives us the information we need in one place – vital for an organisation like ours. We can adapt and tailor it to ensure it meets the regulatory requirements the College operates within as well as using it for our general management needs.